Bills aim to change Pa. redistricting process

Bills to change the way the state redraws legislative district boundaries are pending, even as the commission charged with that task struggles to approve new House and Senate districts.

DAVID PIERCE

Bills to change the way the state redraws legislative district boundaries are pending, even as the commission charged with that task struggles to approve new House and Senate districts.

Two Senate bills aimed to remove politics from the process, but if history is a guide, they won't get much consideration.

"The tough thing with this is it only becomes an issue every 10 years," said Steve DeFrank, chief of staff to Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-18, who authored one of the reform bills. "Will it stay on people's radar?"

Boscola's bill would create a new bureau of civil servants — insulated from pressures faced by political appointees — to analyze population data after every decennial census to redraw legislative boundaries based on population changes. The bureau will draw new House and Senate maps subject to an up-or-down vote of the General Assembly without amendments.

If the legislature rejects the bureau maps, members will provide limited guidance to the bureau on its objections. The bureau would then submit a second set of district boundaries for a legislative vote without amendments.

If a third legislative vote is required, members would be allowed to amend the plan similar to amendments to other bills. A similar process would be used by the bureau to redraw U.S. Congressional boundaries every 10 years.

Currently a five-member Legislative Reapportionment Commission, including the four House and Senate Democratic and Republican leaders, draws the new legislative maps. Congressional district changes are approved by the full General Assembly in the form of a bill. The party holding the most power traditionally prevails in redrawing districts that favor their party and incumbent office holders.

"We're just trying to limit the politics in what is admittedly a political process," DeFrank said. "We're trying to build grassroots support for this."

Boscola's bill requires a state Constitutional amendment to become law, meaning the General Assembly would have to pass it in two successive sessions, followed by a positive statewide voter referendum.

Boscola has introduced her bill — modeled on the process used in Iowa — several times since 2004.

Sen. Daylin Leach, a Democrat representing parts of Delaware and Montgomery counties, has a bill that would replace the five-member Reapportionment Commission with a nine-member commission. Four members would be named by Republican caucus leaders, four by Democratic leaders, and those eight would name the ninth member, a registered independent.

All deliberations of the nine-member group would be in public, resulting in a draft plan approved by at least seven of them, subject to an up-or-down legislative vote without amendments. If the General Assembly rejects both a first and second draft from the commission, the state Supreme Court would impose one of the two plans as final.